Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins Revisited: The Supreme Court's Dismissal of Adams v. Florida Power Corps

University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, Dec 2004

By Cassaundra L. Manning, Published on 04/01/04

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Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins Revisited: The Supreme Court's Dismissal of Adams v. Florida Power Corps

U. PA. JOURNAL OF LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT LAW Cassaundra L. Manningt 0 0 t J.D. 2004, University of Pennsylvania Law School 2004; Columbia University 2001. The author is the Executive Editor of Production for the Journal of Labor and Employment Law. 1. Adams v. Florida Power Corp. , 535 U.S. 228 (2002). 2. 29 U.S.C In April of 2002, the Supreme Court dismissed Adams v. Florida Power Corp.,' once again leaving unanswered the question of whether the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA)2 permits disparate impact claims. The Court previously left this issue unresolved in 1993 by remanding Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins3 without deciding the issue of whether disparate impact theory liability is available under the ADEA. Consequently, there is a circuit court split regarding the applicability of disparate impact claims to the ADEA. Walter Biggins, a sixty-two year old employee of the Hazen Paper Company, sued after being fired just weeks shy of the date on which his pension would vest.4 He filed suit under the ADEA alleging that his age was a determinative factor in Hazen's decision to terminate him.5 Hazen claimed that Biggins was discharged for engaging in business with Hazen's competitors.' The district court found for the plaintiff on the ADEA claim and the holding was affirmed by the court of appeals.7 The Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide whether an employer's interference with an - REVISITED: THE OF ADAMS V. employee's pension benefits vesting is violative of the ADEA. On the surface, the interference with pension benefits may not appear to be an age discrimination issue. In fact, courts have been in disagreement over seniority being a proxy for age.8 However, since pension eligibility is determined by the number of years an employee has worked for a particular employer, pension is "empirically correlated with age."9 Termination purely based on age is a blatant violation of the ADEA and accordingly, the Supreme Court remanded the case, allowing the district court to properly determine Hazen's motivation for firing Biggins. ° Interestingly, Biggins did not assert a disparate impact claim under the ADEA. Biggins' allegation was a pure disparate treatment claim." Despite the asserted claim being under a disparate treatment theory, this case contributed to the circuit court split and the academic debate over the availability of disparate impact claims under the ADEA. The Court proclaimed, "we have never decided whether a disparate impact theory of liability is available under the ADEA ... and we need not do so here."' 2 The facts of Adams are divergent from those of Hazen in that in the former, the plaintiff class was alleging disparate impact theory liability under the ADEA.1 3 The plaintiffs claimed that the Florida Power Corporation's reorganization scheme disproportionately and adversely affected older employees. 14 While the district court first certified the plaintiff class, it later decertified the class, maintaining that the individual claims were too dissimilar to proceed as a class. It then allowed individual plaintiffs to file claims, but found that the ADEA precludes 8. Id. at 608-09. The Court noted this in its discussion of precedent in Hazen: Compare White v. Westinghouse Electric Co., 862 F.2d 56, 62 (CA3 1988) (firing of older employee to prevent vesting of pension benefits violates ADEA); Metz v. Transit Mix, Inc., 828 F.2d 1202 (CA7 1987) (firing of older employee to save salary costs resulting from seniority violates ADEA), with Williams v. General Motors Corp., 656 F.2d 120, 130, n.17 (CA5 1981) ("[S]eniority and age discrimination are unrelated .... We state without equivocation that the seniority a given plaintiff has accumulated entitles him to no better or worse treatment in an age discrimination suit"), cert. denied, 455 U.S. 943 (1982); EEOC v. Clay Printing Co., 955 F.2d 936, 942 (CA4 1992) (emphasizing distinction between employee's age and years of service). Id. 9. Hazen, 507 U.S. at 608. 10. Id. at 614. 11. For a discussion of the difference between disparate impact and disparate treatment see infra pt. II. 12. Hazen, 507 U.S. at 610. 13. Adams v. Florida Power Corp., 255 F.3d 1322, 1323-24 (1lth Cir. 2001). 14. Id. 15. Id. disparate impact claims. This finding was affirmed by the court of appeals. 16 Although the court of appeals acknowledged that the Supreme Court had not decided the issue, it found against the plaintiff class because of a perceived symmetry between the ADEA and the Equal Pay Act (EPA); 17 the Supreme Court has held that disparate impact claims are not viable under the EPA.'8 The Supreme Court granted certiorari and subsequently dismissed the claim.' 9 The opinion simply reads, "[t]he writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently granted. It is so ordered., 20 Even though the facts of these two cases differ and the complaints alleged different theories of discrimination, the cases are strikingly similar in that the Supreme Court made i (...truncated)


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Cassaundra L. Manning. Hazen Paper Co. v. Biggins Revisited: The Supreme Court's Dismissal of Adams v. Florida Power Corps, University of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law, 2004, Volume 6, Issue 3,